Speeches

Madam President, for us in the former Eastern Bloc, freedom of speech is a key value. We are sensitive to its limitations and in favor of seemingly generous goals. Moreover, one cannot help but notice that the aim is often to protect left-wing dogmas rather than specific individuals. For example, the tabooing of the debate on migration policy due to the fear of accusations of spreading hatred has led us to a situation where – and this is terrible – hundreds of thousands of people in European capitals march with terrorist flags and praise the massacres against Jews. Now we are trying to enshrine this taboo in a legislative and pan-European way. Unfortunately, this also reminds us from the Eastern Bloc of a familiar way of solving problems. In your life, everyone has to cope with criticism, which can be inappropriate or even painful. And if it goes beyond the limits of the right to individual or group protection, each State has the means to put an end to it. There is no need for harmonisation at European level. I myself come from the most atheistic country in Europe, but I really don't want to see politicians standing in our court for a quote from the Bible, as we saw in Finland.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today it is exactly fifty-five years since a young student set himself on fire in the centre of Prague. Jan Palach committed his own life to try to awaken Czech society from lethargy, fatigue and pessimism in the face of violent Russian aggression and occupation. Fatigue and lethargy are also beginning to spread in Europe. We mustn't succumb to it. Yesterday, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy said: “If we run out of weapons, we will defend ourselves with shovels”. But Russia cannot be defended by shovels alone. The Ukrainians need weapons, and we must help them and give them more weapons than we do now and before it is too late.

Mr President, the proposed law on critical raw materials is undoubtedly a proposal that deserves our support. If we want the transformation under the Green Deal to have at least a little chance of success, I will raise my hand for it. I'll take a few notes, though. First of all, just as a house is not built from the roof, the submission of legislative proposals should be logical. This law should have been here a long time ago, not only after we had adopted a regulation on batteries, with which we suddenly realized that meeting all the desired goals will not be any fun. Secondly, of course, it is good that we do not want to switch from one dependence on fossil fuels to another, but setting detailed prescriptive targets for 2030 resembles the economic exercises of comrades in the former Soviet bloc rather than the rules of a self-confident actor who does not want to be laughable to others. But the important thing is that the permitting is accelerating, and now there is no choice but to pray that the people in whose vicinity it will be mined understand it.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the report we are debating today is built on two key ideas. First, that space is a strategic arena which is vital for our security and well-being. Secondly, that the increased competition from the authoritarian states, like Russia or China, necessitates that the EU and its Member States share resources and capabilities to address security in outer space. It also encourages investment, which cultivates a competitive European space industry, and calls for the continuation of enhanced cooperation between NATO and the EU in the areas of shared interest. All objectives are achieved through utilising existing interinstitutional frameworks or agencies. Therefore, ECR supports this report as the threats to space-based communication capabilities are growing, and the operational capability of the Member States to address these threats is, for now, far too low.

Madam President, thank you very much, I was stuck in the traffic. Paní předsedající, já to řeknu natvrdo. Zpráva, kterou připravovala kolegyně Sarah Wienerová, je špatná. Penalizuje členské státy, které už roky poctivě snižují objem používaných pesticidů, znemožňuje jim definovat si citlivé oblasti, kde se pesticidy budou využívat jen omezeně, po svém, dle místních podmínek, protože je chce definovat od stolu, celoevropsky a pro všechny stejně. A v neposlední řadě zemědělcům neposkytuje žádnou alternativu, jen zákazy a příkazy. A všichni víme, jak se Levice, a zvláště Zelení stavějí k povolování nových šlechtitelských metod. Jsme přesvědčeni o tom, že naše zemědělství si zaslouží méně zeleného fanatismu a více realismu. Ne pro zemědělství samotné, ale zejména pro spotřebitele. Neuváženou regulací ohrožujeme cenovou dostupnost potravin, a pokud neprojdou klíčové pozměňovací návrhy Výboru pro zemědělství a rozvoj venkova týkající se cílů, naši podporu tento návrh nezíská.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Commission is too late to remember that without industry and innovation there will be no decarbonisation. Yes, we commend that. This proposal contains some useful things: perhaps less bureaucracy, accelerated permitting of selected investments, fiction of consent. But most importantly, we're still staggering halfway: Full support for nuclear energy. Without it, there will be no decarbonisation in continental Europe. Umbrellas and windmills are not enough. When I came here to Strasbourg today, even in this weather, no sunshine and only half of the windmills were spinning. The Council has taken a good step forward with this proposal. Unfortunately, the position of the European Parliament is weaker and the Greens and Social Democrats still want to weaken it as usual. Friends, let's finally gather our courage and let's be clear: without a core, we will not decarbonise. We fully support the core.

Thank you very much to colleagues for endorsing my report for backing a measured approach to emission limits and testing procedures under Euro 7 and, therefore, in accordance with Rule 59, I kindly request that the report be referred back to the ENVI Committee for interinstitutional meetings.

Madam President, thank you very much. I think we had a useful debate, and I want to thank everybody for joining us in this debate. I want to thank, of course, all those associated committees – ITRE, TRAN and IMCO – for their work, which certainly helped to craft my report and to reach a rational balanced proposal. I want to thank also the shadows, in particular Jens Gieseke and Susana Solís, for the excellent cooperation. I want also to appreciate that the Commission is waking up to a more realistic attitude compared with the original proposal. Yes, it comes under attack from the left. I have two points on that. First, you argue with public health in the big cities. I have a clear medicine solution. You should invest much more in public transportation – like we did in Prague – and then you would not have this kind of problem. Don’t ask the poorer countries to give up their automobiles. Just try to watch the highway connecting Frankfurt, Prague, Bratislava. It’s one light commercial after another, transporting the old, under Euro 6, cars to the east. And this is a disaster for the environment. So that’s the reason why we selected this rational approach. And even you – I read your amendments – moved in the direction of my report. So you recognise that this Commission original proposal was not the best one. Nevertheless, the reality is that you continue to press for unworkable high emission limits and new testing parameters, which will require significant cost. Thus I cannot support that because it would eliminate the smaller cars from the fleets immediately. And it’s not just the most vulnerable people. It’s also the lower half of society. The left, in the past, was defending those people and now I don’t see this. So I think therefore it’s essential to endorse, and I hope you endorse, my report.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, almost a year has passed since the Commission published its Euro 7 proposal. Unlike previous regulations, Euro 7 encompasses a broad range of vehicles, all within a single legal framework. For the first time, this legislation also contains rules affecting electric vehicles. No matter which politician you ask, they will all claim to be committed to a sustainable automotive industry. However, the crucial difference is whether the rules being pushed for Euro 7 are realistic. I support the Commission’s goal of producing cleaner cars and improving the quality of the air. But we must also act with due care and caution, not least because the sector accounts for more than 9 % of GDP, 26 % of manufacturing and 24 % of exports in the country I know best. The Commission’s original proposal would have a hugely negative impact on consumers and car manufacturers – an impact which is disproportionate to its positive environmental effects. Firstly, it would divert resources from decarbonisation by requiring substantial investment in soon-to-be-obsolete internal combustion engine technology. Secondly, there are serious questions over the feasibility of the Commission-recommended standards, especially in view of short lead times. Thirdly, the cost implications are a major cause of concern, as they would have exceeded the estimates in the proposal’s impact assessment. This in turn would have led to higher costs for consumers that are already grappling with the challenges of rising costs of living. It was therefore imperative to rework the Commission text and establish a better balance between the environmental objectives and the concerns of consumers and manufacturers. After four months of negotiations, I believe that the mandate adopted in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety largely achieves that. First, testing parameters are not a revolution as the Commission proposed, but an evolution from the Euro 6 parameters, which ensures that the new emission standards remain economically and technologically feasible. Secondly, under these testing conditions, the report is able to correspond with the levels proposed by the Commission for pollutant emissions for passenger cars, and proposes additional three categories for light commercial vehicles based on their weight. Thirdly, the adopted text also proposes tougher limits for exhaust emissions from the buses and heavy-duty vehicles, including levels set for the real driving emissions. Forced to avoid legal and investor uncertainties, specific implementation timeframes have been included that, in turn, are linked to the entry into force of all relevant secondary legislation. Once all the relevant secondary legislation is complete, new types of fully duty vehicles would have 24 months, and new types of heavy-duty vehicles 48 months, to comply. All existing types of the light-duty vehicles will have 36 months, and heavy-duty vehicles 60 months, to ensure compliance. The sixth report also better aligns EU methodologies and limits for brake particle emission and tyre abrasion rates with UNECE standards, as well as asking for more ambitious yet achievable goals for electric vehicles’ battery-durability standards. Generally, I believe the committee report represents our best opportunity at securing an interinstitutional agreement ahead of the elections. Why? Because the Council has raised many comparable concerns over the cost, timing and technical feasibility. For that reason, we can already see the outline of possible landing space for the compromise between the co-legislators. It is therefore essential that Plenary endorse my committee report.

Mr President, for us in the former Eastern Bloc, freedom of speech is key and we are very sensitive to restricting it even in favour of seemingly generous goals. Real disinformation and foreign-paying information must be distinguished from inconvenient opinions. Disinformation has its fixed definition that it is a demonstrable lie spread knowingly for some purpose to an audience. It needs to be kept. Unfortunately, vague expressions such as disinformation narratives are increasingly emerging. Their definitions are vague, but they can cover absolutely anything that does not seem mainstream, a different view of migration, the state of Western culture. Just because the Russians or Chinese say something doesn't mean they're wrong. Surveys across the Western world show that people are afraid to talk about things that bother them. Suppressing free debate leads to liberals being repeatedly dismayed by the election results. During the Cold War, the West allowed misguided Marxists, Maoists, and other useful totalitarian idiots to freely disseminate information. He won the Cold War.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, all the complexity, the ambiguity, perhaps even the insolvability of everything that is happening in the Middle East, must not obscure our minds from what is essential here. What we saw last week is actually black and white. The attack of the barbarians on our civilization, the attack of those who choose death, those who love life, the attack of those who kill women and children in the name of their evil aims, abduct them, rape them, and even their own people do not hesitate to deploy as living human shields. The story that takes place there is not about Palestinians, but about Hamas, about terrorists, about those who deny Israel everything, including the right to its existence. And our task here is the only one: not to curse peace, but to stand firmly and unwaveringly on Israel's side.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am glad for today's debate on water. Unfortunately, it is symptomatic that it is literally drowned among other points, although we all know that without water there is no life. And that's what we all say here. The same goes for the whole Green Deal. We always remember it after we've exhausted other topics, or when we're dealing with droughts or floods. That's wrong. Water deserves our constant attention. In my own country, for example, I am working to ensure that water is explicitly protected in the constitution. Existing EU legislation is robust, but there are also unfortunate trends. For example, the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, a proposal that we voted on here last time, is of course justified, but it can also limit access to water if it is too strict. In sensitive areas, the sewerage fee may increase by tens of percent. That is why I would like to appeal here once again to consider all the consequences of our decisions, including social ones. Elections are approaching, and if we indiscriminately touch people's water, it will come back to us like a boomerang.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. We have agreed and we have implemented 11 sets of sanctions against Russia, and by far it is a big success. I do not remember anything similar in the last decades. However, it still has the loopholes, and we need to fix the loopholes. One of the largest loopholes is Iran, which is providing the equipment to Putin, including the drones and other high technology. Iran also has its hidden hand behind what happened in Israel a week ago. Ladies and gentlemen, one of the most important thing to fill the loophole is to stop Iran. It’s to sanction Iran. Please let us move ahead.

Mr President, I don’t see the urban wastewater treatment only as a mandatory part of the circular economy concept, but above all, an important civilisation achievement that we should be rightly proud of. And that’s why I am glad that Nils Torvalds has done a lot of work on the proposal we have on the table today. Unfortunately, as always, the devil is hidden in the detail. The revised directive will not affect everyone equally. An example: when it comes to the treatment of phosphorus and nitrogen, the text places high demands, especially on those countries that mostly or entirely fall into the sensitive areas. Coincidentally, these are the same countries that only built wastewater treatment plants in recent years following their entry into the Union. In other words, although the treatment plants there meet best available technologies, there is a risk that the Member States concerned will have to reconstruct them again and thus spend billions and raise the water price for people. And that’s why I tabled the Amendment 253 and ask please for your support.

Madam President, the wolf is back and I think this is a debate that must not be conducted ideologically, but in principle very practically and pragmatically. On the one hand, nature conservation has achieved great success, the wolf is back, I myself have a country house in the north of Bohemia, it was the first place where the wolf returned to us after 200 years. I've seen the pack, there's a howl on my phone. It's a beautiful song. I am happy about it and there is an advantage that it is a former military space, so there is no interaction with those small sheep breeders. You go a little further, 50 kilometers, and there you see two wolves massacring 80 sheep overnight for pleasure. And the farmer doesn't have the means to take costly measures, and even the help from the state isn't enough. So I think this is about finding a solution. Just the situation in different regions, in different countries is different and the European Commission should reflect on this and deal with it really on the ground, as required by the circumstances there in the country. We are all dealing with the donkey of the President of the Commission, but there are simply thousands of farmers, small sheep farmers, who are in a much more difficult situation than she is.

Mr President, let us be clear. The directive, as prepared by the rapporteur, will not lead to an improvement in air quality, but only to pressure for a blanket restriction on free economic activity and an increase in the number of actions against Member States. These are already struggling to meet today's limits, which are based on the 2005 WTO recommendations, especially in cities, not to mention the 2021 limits. In order to understand each other, I am not calling for us to do nothing in the matter of air. I am aware of the impact on public health. However, we need to build on real possibilities and, above all, on the availability of the best technologies, which is still limited. As Euro 7 rapporteur, I would like to say that even if we were to follow the strictest possible path, the left, with Javi Lopez at the forefront, will still be little. Are we prepared for the fact that no European city can be reached by the cleanest car? Do we have as robust public transport in all European cities as in the Czech Republic? I don't think so. Keep that in mind for tomorrow's vote.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today’s vote on nature restoration provides us with a very useful lesson. Those of us who love nature, who want to protect the birds and the bees were very glad that it passed through, but with a very narrow margin. I think it’s obvious that the Green Deal faces its limits. The elections are close and the people are tired. The text which went through the Council and Parliament is more realistic than what was proposed the Commission. I still remember, in the past, the Commission as a guardian of fairness. Today it is trying to lead us, but sometimes it’s taking an almost extreme position. This historic decarbonisation just makes the lives of our people in Europe more expensive. It provides an advantage to China, and globally it does not generate any effect. The EU is travelling around the summits in the global arena, lecturing others, but the others are either smiling into our eyes or doing this in a more capitalistic way, like the United States. We still can change it, but must do something for nature now and locally, here, that we older people would see some result from during our lifetime. Because if you ask people to sacrifice something, they must be offered also some redemption.

Mr President, for colleagues on the left, Viktor Orbán supported this in the Council. The proposal we have on the table is not good and is intrinsically contradictory. Yes, it is good that it can help disappearing birds, pollinators, help retain water in the landscape. On the other hand, it complicates the livelihood of the peasants, we know that. It brutally encroaches on the competences of the Member States and generates uncovered costs. In the Council, some of these shortcomings, such as the frantic power given to NGOs, have been remedied. Thank God for that. But the main mistake was made by the Commission and Frans Timmermans. Where's Frans Timmermans? We – and this House too – have hysterically prioritised decarbonisation, which makes everything locally more expensive but produces no results globally. The heat is still on, and China is generating profits. If we had voted on this proposal two years ago, I bet it would have gone through like a knife with butter. Now we have a divided House, and it's up to us to do it.

Madam President, I was the shadow rapporteur for the opinion on AFIR, or alternative infrastructure, alternative charging, and I will say the following: those of us – and I count on them too – who think that it is not wise to ban internal combustion engines, but to leave it to some market, naturally and logically tend to think that it would be far better to let the market environment and what demand actually is, rather than, in a socialist way, to build something according to different five-year plans, to ban something, to order something. But the reality here is that in this environment and in this venerable institution, the socialist view prevailed, that is, to forbid, to command. So if we want to ban people from running those internal combustion engines – and I say again, I disagree with that – then, of course, we also have to offer them something so that they can drive and so that they can charge. From this point of view, of course, the AFIR legislation is of great importance. That's why I took part in the negotiations. Even here, I have to say that it is far from over and enthusiastically agree with it. Such a situation is certainly not there simply because we, our factions, would prefer a much broader degree of technological neutrality. Here again, we prefer electromobility dominantly, so we are actually putting European industry at risk so that China simply overwhelms us here. I think that's a huge mistake. But there is no doubt that if people drive electric cars, they must also have a place to charge, and if we forbid and order them to do so, we must also offer them an alternative.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, this has been said many times, but it needs to be repeated over and over again. Ukraine is fighting for us. And because she fights for us in her brave fight, it is our duty to help her in this struggle, to help her militarily, economically, politically and morally. Important meetings of both the European Council and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are approaching, and Ukraine also needs a future perspective. It needs not only the weapons that we are sending it right, not only the economic help that we are giving it, but also the prospect that it will be with us both in the European Union and in the North Atlantic Alliance. And let us think about it when we meet on the eve of the holidays, and let us support Ukraine in this sense.

Mr President, I am still from the old traditional capitalist school. I think the business's job is to generate profit and not to prove to the last detail how it was achieved, or to show the loyalty of the local government and its dominant ideology. There is a lot of talk about China, but we are certainly not regulating ourselves for a successful competitiveness with China. Concept due diligence as this report conceives it, it is, in my view, an edge, and indirectly, but all the more intensely, it will hit especially small and medium-sized enterprises, companies that are always here in unison and often hypocritically calling for the backbone of the European economy. Let us now agree that we are serious about them and reject this silly and dangerous message.

Mr President, dear friends, China is an emerging superpower and aspiring to be the global number one. Therefore, we definitely are in a situation of need of a proper and coherent strategy. But this should not be done according to lines which we have seen the last week when President Macron went to China to pursue the economic interest of his own country and, as a reward to his host, offered a vision of European equidistance to the United States and China at the same time. He did even worse in the name of the EU. He was speaking about the EU strategic autonomy, but offered a strategic ambiguity instead. And he did this in a situation when we terribly need a strong NATO and the cooperation of the US in the Ukraine. Next time we must do much better.

... is that the situation has changed, that the price of the electricity is three times higher than when we have concluded the agreement here last summer. That is simply the matter of true. Secondly, yes, I have to pay three times more than a year ago. (Off-mic comments in the Chamber) That’s, you know, my token of appreciation to Peter. I said, you know, that you approach this as a really honest broker, in the best Bismarckian tradition. Yeah, but simply, we had a full Wenceslas Square yesterday, very angry people, so it’s political.

Mr President, I would like to thank Peter Liese, who was the rapporteur for the most important dossier. . Thanks to this, we have managed to provide at least relief for the heating plants so that the central heat supply does not break down. Emergency brakes were also put in place to prevent further excessive increases in the price of allowances. But that's where the beauty ends. Unfortunately, the circumstances have further deteriorated and we as a whole in the ECR group may not be able to support the package. Why? Electricity prices are now tripling. People are getting poor, they don't have heating, I'm not going to show any yellow vests here, but all you have to do is watch TV. Yesterday, people completely filled Wenceslas Square in Prague. So it's a problem, a political problem. Second, yes, we say Putin is to blame. It's Putin's fault, but it's also ours. We cannot use Putin as an alibi for everything, the reality is that the allowance price is one hundred euros per tonne, which is five times the situation two years ago. Third, qualified estimates say that electricity consumption will double within ten to fifteen years. We'll have to import it, but we don't have a place to go. We don't have where, because Germany is shutting down the last nuclear power plants. We will build new ones, but within ten to fifteen years, with the support of this House, we have no chance of building them. So, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin said: ‘Soviet power plus electrification equals communism.’ We are working on electrification, we are handing over power to Brussels here, so I pray that the result will be better than it was then. (The speaker agreed to respond to the speech by raising a blue card.)

Mr President, well, if you know, we will vote tomorrow on the revision of the Regulation on fluorinated greenhouse gases, also known as ‘F—gases’, which belongs among the greenhouse gases. Therefore, like CO2, they have come under the Commission’s scrutiny. It is, of course, right to limit the use of F—gases, because they have a high global warming potential, even greater than CO2 itself. At the same time, it should be done wisely and definitely not by shooting ourselves in our own foot. Besides their other applications, F—gases are used in heat pumps, which become one of the most effective tools to save energy and to cut off from Russian gas. That is why more and more households are installing them and public demand is increasing. I want to thank Bas Eickhout for his rapporteurship, which he carried out in an open—minded and constructive way. I want to thank him, for example, for finding a solution regarding the usage of F—gases for the cooling of nuclear power plants. On the other hand, some crucial elements are still missing in the final compromise. The phase-out of the F—gases in the heat pumps is, in my opinion, too fast for us to be able to meet the requirements. Therefore, I want to recommend that we vote for some amendments.